Sanitas Radio | Because your health and longevity should not be classified information.

Tuesday, August 26, 2014

Kids Already Have Middle Age Illnesses: What Can We Do?

The
woes of adulthood are hitting today’s children too fast and not only
via the pernicious influences of popular culture, marketing and peer
pressure. More and more children are being diagnosed with chronic
diseases that have previously been only seen in middle age adults.

Harvard
Medical School researchers have found that there has been a 27 percent
increase in the number of children aged 8-17 diagnosed with high blood
pressure; one reason is a rise among children in obesity (which is also
rising among kids around the globe). Today’s children are also at very
real risk of type 2 diabetes, pre-diabetes, sleep apnea and joint pain,
all diseases that had struck previous generations as they entered middle
age.

Indeed, earlier this year, the American Academy of
Pediatrics released its first guidelines for type 2 diabetes, sometimes
called adult-onset diabetes, among children, as pediatricians have not
been trained to identify and diagnose this disease. Doctors are also
expressing concerns that, in order to treat these diseases in children,
they are prescribing them with the same medicines that adults take but
with no idea about the long-term effects.

Minority children are
especially at risk. The new study also found that, in African-American
children, blood pressure was 28 percent higher than in non-Hispanic
white children. Previous research has found that there is a higher rate
of diabetes in minorities than in white: African-Americans and Native
Americans are twice as likely to have diabetes as whites and Hispanics,
1.7 times as likely.

We Know What’s Raising Blood Pressure in Kids: Let’s Do Something About It!

In
the new study, researchers drew their data from the National Health and
Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) III which collects information on
health, eating and lifestyle behaviors. 3,200 children were involved in
the survey in 1988-1994 and more than 8,300 in 1999-2008. While the
children found to have high blood pressure did not have diagnosed
hypertension (which requires a threshold blood pressure reading of 140
-90), having elevated blood pressure (anything above 120-80) at a young
age sets one at real risk for future serious health problems.